Head-shrinker
noun, slang ·Moderate ·College level
Definitions
- 1 A psychiatrist or psychotherapist; a shrink. slang
"DIESEL: In the opinion on this court, this child is depraved on account he ain't had a normal home. ACTION: Hey, I'm depraved on account I'm deprived. DIESEL: So take him to a headshrinker."
- 2 a savage who cuts off and preserves the heads of enemies as trophies wordnet
- 3 One who shrinks heads, as previously done by some Amazon tribes. literally
"I listened to the sculptor of Dead Dad give an interview to a European television station while he crouched by the shrunken corpse of his own creation, a huge technical advance over the headshrinkers of New Guinea."
- 4 a physician who specializes in psychiatry wordnet
Example
More examples"DIESEL: In the opinion on this court, this child is depraved on account he ain't had a normal home. ACTION: Hey, I'm depraved on account I'm deprived. DIESEL: So take him to a headshrinker."
Etymology
Originally US, probably by reference to slang terms like “swelled head” for someone with delusions of grandeur; a psychiatrist would remove such delusions, thus figuratively shrinking the patient's swelled head.
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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.